


30 Seconds To Wake Up

by Hecate



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 22:40:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I want my brother back," Lucifer says, and Sam shrugs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	30 Seconds To Wake Up

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not mine, no money made.

**1)**

The sky is exploding behind the Impala, Dean's eyes hard as he speeds up even more, Kali bottled up rage in the backseat.

"It's him," Sam says. Nobody answers.

 

**2)**

Lucifer is fury in his dream, terrible and frightening, and Sam presses himself against the blood-red walls of the nightmare room he found himself in.

He has never seen the devil look angry.

"He's dead," Lucifer growls. "He's dead because of you. He was supposed to sit this out, he wasn't supposed to be there..."

Sam swallows against the accusations; thinks of Gabriel and his sudden, insane bravery. "You killed him."

Silence follows.

Then, slowly, painfully:

"I did."

 

**3)**

Mornings still come these days, even with an archangel dead and the devil walking the earth. Mornings still come, and sometimes Sam laughs when he opens his eyes, laughs when the sky is still blue, no clouds of fire, no blood dripping onto the grass.

Sam thinks he might be going crazy.

He wonders if that matters.

 

**4)**

There's a town filled with the dead, black flies and men dressed in hazmat suits. There's a town that stood in Pestilence's way. Sam can't forget the smell.

They don't talk when they leave it, don't talk when they arrive at Bobby's place. Silence and death and broken cars, whiskey not enough to make it better, to dull the knowledge of what's to come. 

Dean turns on the TV, raises his glass to the screen when Doctor Sexy appears. "Here's to you, you bastard." 

 

**5)**

"I want my brother back," Lucifer says, and Sam shrugs.

"I want a pony."

 

**6)**

"World peace would be nice as well," he tells Lucifer during the next dream, and Lucifer's almost familiar mask of curiosity and amusement slips away. Anger is all that's left then, the fury of the night he killed Gabriel back again, and Sam thinks that dying might count in a dream if it was the devil killing the dreamer.

He thinks about risking it, ending the apocalypse with a defiant comment. But Lucifer would just put him together again, Sam just a puzzle under his hands. 

Sam shrugs, smiles. It would at least be a break. And maybe the devil would put him back together wrong, make him too small, a vessel suddenly imperfect. It's a nice thought.

But Sam wakes up. He's still alive.

A part of him is disappointed.

 

**7)**

After killing the thing that wore Brady, after killing the demon that used his friend and was his friend, he misses Stanford again.

It might have been a lie, it might have been running, but it was a bit of heaven, and the demons tainted it and broke it and set it on fire. And somewhere in between, his brother ripped him out of it. 

Sometimes, Sam blames him.

Sometimes, he knows just how Lucifer feels.

 

**8)**

Once upon a time, angels were a myth. Something Sam believed in, something he hoped for. Now, they're just another kind of monster. And Sam, Sam is a hunter.

He reads the Bible and the lore, looking for weakness, laughing at the worship that riddles the pages.

Warriors of an absent God, manipulators; and he sees Lucifer in all of them, Gabriel in none. And Castiel ... Castiel is gone and Castiel is not what he used to be.

Sam finds a statue of Gabriel in a church that's been left behind; a statue fallen, pieces missing, shattered wings.

He kneels, touches the stone. It's cold and dead. He says a prayer anyway, words that were once familiar now bitter and alien in his mouth.

He wonders who is listening, he wonders if anyone or anything still cares.

 

**9)**

Castiel comes back, and Dean tells him about Gabriel, about his brother's last stand.

Castiel just nods, too calm and too stiff, walking out of the room without a word. He looks different all over again, and Sam wonders if it's all the weight Castiel carries, a weight that's pushing him down to the earth, now that he has no wings to hold him up anymore.

He tries to ignore it, tries to look at Castiel as if his brother wasn't dead, and Sam knows that he fails him, knows that he can't pretend when it comes to this.

He brings Castiel whiskey instead, watches as Castiel drinks his pain away until he's numb and calm. Maybe, Sam thinks, maybe that's how Castiel used to feel when he was still an angel.

He doesn't ask.

 

**10)**

"Tell me about Michael," Sam demands, just to see the devil's face when Sam says that name, just to see Lucifer's face crumble.

There's no triumph in it.

There's just a little brother left behind.

 

**11)**

"I'm going to bring him back." The devil sounds manic, human; and Sam shudders against the thought, shudders against the memories of himself; hunting the Trickster, chasing the solution that could bring Dean back from hell just months later.

He thinks of his brother and of Gabriel, thinks of Lucifer's new quest.

'Yes,' he thinks. 'I am like you."

It doesn't scare him as much as it used to.

But he still can't take it.

 

**12)**

They find Pestilence raging and cursing Lucifer, spitting disease all over the world, and Sam feels as if he'll never be clean again. When they leave with the third ring, he wonders if Lucifer ever met the Horsemen, if he ever looked at Pestilence's face. He wonders what Lucifer saw there.

Bobby is confused when they return. "Nothing is happening," he tells them. "Nothing at all. As if Lucifer had enough of his own damn apocalypse."

Sam thinks of his dream then, of Lucifer's new quest.

And suddenly, there's hope.

 

**13)**

He tells Castiel first because Gabriel was his brother, too. And Lucifer is as well, no matter how often they all choose to forget that.

"He wants to bring Gabriel back."

A pause, a frown. Castiel impossible still, even now that he's human. And Sam is still not used to it, not the stillness and not to the humanity that infected the angel who pulled Dean out of hell.

Then Castiel finally answers, careful and controlled: "It will weaken him greatly. If it works at all."

Sam nods. He doesn't ask Castiel if he wants Lucifer to succeed. 

He knows the answer.

 

**14)**

There's a new edge to Lucifer now, open obsession replacing everything Sam knew so far.

"Why?" He asks him because he needs to know, because it means something and he can't deny it, no matter how much he hates the devil.

"I'm not Michael," Lucifer answers as if that was enough, as if it would explain everything.

And maybe, Sam thinks, it does.

 

**15)**

"I think the apocalypse doesn't matter to him right now," he tells Dean. "I think Gabriel is more important." 

It's strange to talk about Lucifer like that. Not the devil, not the monster they have to beat. Instead, the brother who killed his own, a deed Sam can't even begin to understand. The brother who wants to turn back time, wants to make things alright again.

This, this new thing, Sam understands.

It's Sam and it's Dean, and Sam hates how the devil can be just like them. He should be a monster that's easy to spot, horns and hoofs and fire. Instead, he looks like a man; instead he misses his brother like a human would.

 

**16)**

In a bookshop in a small town, Sam reads the first pages of a novel.

Lucifer falls in love in it, falls apart over a human, and it should amuse Sam, should make him laugh. But it doesn't.

Instead, he reads until he has to leave to meet up with Dean.

Later, with the world passing him by outside the Impala, he wonders how the story ends.

 

**17)**

"You'll help me bring him back," the devil demands, and Sam is almost used to the tension that has replaced Lucifer's eerie calmness. It's wrapped all around Nick's body, makes Lucifer more real than he used to be. Before Gabriel, Lucifer was a silhouette in his dreams, something Sam was not sure he could truly touch. But now he thinks he would find solid flesh if he should ever reach out for him.

But he won't. He promises himself that he won't.

"You'll help me. Or I will kill Dean." There's hellfire in Lucifer's words, power barely under control, and Sam steps away from it before he answers.

"Michael would just bring him back." It's a fact, not a dare; the angels' interest in both of them a life insurance Sam never wanted.

"I'd like to see him try." Anger and confidence, a lost rebellion in Lucifer's words, and Sam wants to laugh at him, wants to remind him who exactly send Lucifer to hell. But he knows the angel hasn't forgotten.

"I'd never say yes if you kill Dean." Another fact, clear and true, and finally something in Lucifer changes, bends towards Sam.

"You'll help me bring him back."

Sam pauses before he answers, remembers how he stood in front of the Trickster years ago, remembers begging.

Finally, he nods.

 

**18)**

Dean is angry, the righteous man Heaven needed, and Sam stays silent until his brother wears himself out, he stays silent and watches Castiel.

"So you volunteered us to help the devil get his brother back," Dean says, finally calm.

Sam nods.

"He owes us one after this. Can the devil owe us one?"

Castiel shrugs at Dean's question, strangely casual now surrounded by Jimmy's flesh now. "Maybe," he says.

And Sam still doesn't say anything.

 

**19)**

His dreams are empty for days, his dreams are normal. Colours and clowns, hunts and naked women, a road that runs forever, and Stanford, forever lost.

He wakes up and tells himself that he isn't lonely, that he likes what he sees at night. His dreams are his again and so are his nightmares, his to live through, his to forget.

He wakes up and he doesn't want to fall asleep again.

 

**20)**

Lucifer comes for them in the real world, power gleaming beneath breaking skin, and Sam can't stop staring at him, can't stop counting the wounds that riddle Nick's skin. 

They're not real injuries, he knows that, but some instinct inside of him tells him to make it all better, to sew up the flesh and cover it in white bandages. He almost laughs at the image but doesn't, thinking of his own body used up like this, thinking of an angel trapped in a burning body.

It's a horrifying thought and there's only fear in it, no triumph and no hope.

Sam isn't certain what that means.

He's not certain of anything these days.

 

**21)**

Lucifer lets Dean shoot him two weeks later, holds still and takes it with a slow smile on his face. Sam twitches, Dean curses, and the devil spreads his hand over his heart where Dean's bullet hit him. There's nothing there, no blood, no tear in the flesh, and Sam tries to ignore the short flare of relief.

"Does this make you feel better?" Lucifer asks, and Dean puts on one of his better smirks and nods. Sam is pretty sure his brother is lying but he understands the impulse, understands why Dean pulled the trigger on a force they can't beat in the old Winchester way.

The research is going slowly, the hotel rooms they hole up in are too small to take in all the complications their little group carries with it. It's suffocating and frightening, and sometimes Sam wants to open the door and run away from it all, from his family and his destiny and the way Lucifer looks at him.

But he doesn't.

Dean is still holding his gun, still aiming at Lucifer, and Sam wonders how long his brother can stay like this, how long he can hold this position.

"Can I shoot you again?" Dean asks, demands.

Lucifer grins.

 

**22)**

Castiel avoids them. Avoids Lucifer.

It's hard on Dean even though he would never admit it, it's hard on Sam because Castiel has become his friend somehow, some when. He misses him.

When the former angel is around, he's silent, awkward, and always watching Lucifer. It's obvious in a way that's all angel, the tilt of a head, a blunt stare that never seems to break, careful and yet hard, questioning.

And Lucifer is watching Castiel.

It's a mostly silent dance Sam has no hope of ever understanding, a lost war and centuries of absence wrapped around a brotherhood so unlike what Sam has with Dean.

And Sam can't stop observing it all, holding his breath and waiting for it all to explode.

But it doesn't. 

 

**23)**

Lucifer is horrible and can't understand it, can't understand what he means to humanity. To Sam.

It's disorienting; Lucifer's curiosity and mild confusion about their hatred, the way he doesn't react to it. Sam wants to scream at him, wants to hurt him so that he understands, but he knows it would be useless. Lucifer knows pain well enough, knows the empty feeling of grief and the sharp hurt of betrayal. 

Lucifer just doesn't understand that humans matter, and Sam doesn't know how to teach him. He thinks that maybe Gabriel could.

Maybe Gabriel will.

 

**24)**

Sometimes, Lucifer is quiet, quieter than Castiel ever was, silence wrapped around him, around them all. Sometimes, Sam finds him sitting alone somewhere, and sometimes, Sam sits down at his side and listens how all the sounds become undone, how the heartbeat of the world seems to stop.

It's peaceful in a way Sam can't grasp, frightening because it feels like the end of something, and Sam is scared that the silence will stretch and the world will stand still forever.

Then, he talks, tells Lucifer about things the archangel already knows. Sometimes, Lucifer answers. He talks about his brothers then; about Gabriel mostly, about Raphael barely. About Michael only once.

And Sam knows now, knows about the hole in Lucifer's wings, forever there, the one thing he still has from Michael; knows that Lucifer will love his big brother until there's nothing left of him. Sam knows how it feels to fall.

Sam thinks that maybe it isn't a fall when someone pushes you. Maybe it's something else entirely.

 

**25)**

It's a Sunday, silver with clouds and the threat of rain, it's a Sunday and Dean Winchester just made the devil laugh.

Sam almost stumbles on his way through the room, turns around and stares at Lucifer, stares at his open joy. It's crazy, it's frightening, and it's impossibly human. It's Nick's laughter.

It's all Lucifer. 

Dean looks at Sam, eyebrows rising. "The joke wasn't even that funny," he says, and Sam shrugs. He doesn't know, hasn't heard it, and he wants to ask why Dean is telling jokes to the devil anyway, an idea so absurd that only his brother would ever come up with it. But he doesn't.

He just listens to Lucifer laugh.

 

**26)**

Sam dreams of touching Lucifer, of running his fingers over skin that was once human and now is something strangely alien, something sacred and forsaken.

Lucifer's skin is broken under his touch, Nick's body burning up around all the power bound inside of it. Sam should be disgusted, be scared. He isn't. It's just a dream, after all, and Lucifer hasn't been in any of them for a while.

His fingertips glide of the waves of Lucifer's ribs down to where dream-Lucifer can't deny that his body is human, that something inside of him is changing, and Sam wraps his hand around a cock that's hard and needy.

Lucifer groans, his body arching for Sam, baring his belly and throat as if surrendering to everything Sam is, everything Sam offers with warm hands and a sure touch. The power of it is suffocating and Sam wants it all, wants to bend Lucifer to his will with his fingers and lips. And in his dream, he believes he can.

Lucifer is watching him when Sam wakes up.

 

**27)**

 

A house forgotten by history but not by Heaven, a house with sigils dancing on its walls. A human place, warded from angels and demons alike, sacred because it never was touched by Heaven or Hell.

It's empty, filled with sharp edges, and their heartbeats echo through its halls.

There's a room with a weapon, a knife covered in dead blood. Another room with a candle that only burned once before. A third room, a piece of paper, faint lines like old memories running across it.

Sam takes it all, Dean watches.

Time is running again when they leave and maybe it's running out for somebody. But Sam tells himself that it won't be them and it won't be Gabriel.

 

**28)**

Gabriel is alive, light and power and space unwrapped, and for a while he's just that before he rearranges himself.

Silence follows as he looks at them, his eyes resting on Lucifer before taking in the rest of them. He looks at the knife on the floor, covered in Lucifer's blood, and Sam remembers the sick feeling of stabbing the devil, how he felt completely human under this blade.

"I missed a lot, didn't?" A question followed by a smirk, bravado and fear and something that might be hope on his face. Dean shrugs, then nods, Sam breathes deeper in brief relief.

Lucifer is stone, his face unmoved, and it scares Sam in a way that's all new, that's big and never-ending. But then Gabriel takes a step and stands in front of his brother, all his easiness gone and replaced by open need.

"Lucifer," Gabriel says and waits, waits until Lucifer's hand is wrapped around his arm as if he was trying his best to find out if Gabriel was real, as if he wanted to anchor him to this world again.

Gabriel smiles then, strangely easy and open. "You're such an idiot."

 

**29)**

Lucifer leaves.

Gabriel leaves, too, giving them a dramatic wave and a smirk, following his big brother into nothingness.

"You think it's over?" Dean asks after a while. "The apocalypse? You think he will give up on it?"

Sam shrugs at the question. He hopes giving him Gabriel was enough to appease the devil, he hopes that they gave him something more in the last weeks. But Lucifer has not many choices, not with his body falling apart around him, and Sam doesn't know if there's a way out of that, something other than hell.

He thinks of the angels' father, of the God that left them all behind, and wonders if He'll help his son just once again, help him if Lucifer can bring himself to ask. It's a crazy idea, a hope Sam doesn't dare to have, but he's tired and he can't fight it anymore.

He collapses on his bed, blinks as his brother does the same a few feet away. Outside, the day is ending, darkness and quiet and distant beginnings covering the world once more.

Sam dreams.

 

**30)**

The world he finds in his sleeping mind is peaceful and familiar. It looks like the hotel rooms they spent the last weeks in, it looks like all the hours they spent to find a way to bring Gabriel back. Sam almost expects Dean to come in and make a tired remark, expects Castiel to look at them in a way that is always too knowing, always a bit too much.

But it's just a vessel and the angel connected to it, it's just him and Lucifer, and the devil looks at him as if he's waiting for something.

Sam breathes. And reaches out.


End file.
